Pain
Who hasn’t experienced pain? It’s a staple of the human condition. Some seem to experience it more than others but we all know what it feels like for us.
I got to wondering about the causes for pain, physical and emotional. It seems the physical has more of an evidence trail but sometimes we are still clueless about its origins. Emotional pain also leaves clues but sometimes it is buried so deep that it escapes investigation.
Walking Snuffy the black nosed beagle is a wonderful spiritual practice for me. I get so many ideas while absorbed in this ritual. This morning the word “Pain” came to mind. I immediately knew it was an acronym – P.A.I.N.
A few steps later the acronym had meaning – Past Actions I‘ve Negated.
It may not explain the cause for all of our pain but it’s a useful place to start.
The elephant in the room is not your behavior. That’s the elephant dung.
The cause of your behavior is the problematic pachyderm.
The cause of your pain is what needs to be addressed and it can be addressed more fully when you bring the focus away from others and on to yourself.
Let’s suppose that you develop diabetes. Your physician may ask if it runs in your family. If the answer is “Yes,” you have found your cause, or have you? Or did you negate the lifestyle you lead that lead to your disease? I have a different view of heredity and disease. This is it. “If you do what they did, you get what they got.”
Have you noticed that false teeth are not as common today as they were in the 40’s and 50’s? That’s because most people have better dental hygiene than they had then. I’m sure there was some explanation of heredity given to adults of that generation when their gums became inflamed causing them to lose their teeth.
Long term emotional pain has a cause. What past action are you negating? As long as you take no responsibility for your pain, it will endure. You can try and cover it over with self medicating of some sort but that just leads to a life of shoveling elephant shit from one pile to another.
We keep our pain alive when we cover over its cause. Again, if you are looking past your part in this painful ordeal, you are emotionally myopic.
Past actions don’t have a statute of limitations. They follow you more closely than your shadow.
What do you continue to lie to yourself about? That’s a question that reveals a pain alleviating answer. Once you stop negating the cause, you bring it up for exploration and you can then begin the process of moving through the pain. (Read about that process here).
If you continue to pooh-pooh your past actions, you’ll postpone your prescription and remain in pain.
Take time to address the P.A.I.N. and learn one of life’s best magic tricks – how to make the elephant disappear.
All the best,
John
http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan
http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301
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